From my personal perspective, these championships have been a disaster (but that's nothing new). Both of the nations I have always supported are write-offs. England has fielded more Negroes than anyone else (which is quite a feat, given the presence of traditional coal loaders France and the Netherlands), while Poland's team put in embarrassing performances and - even more significantly - wasn't very Polish at all.
I'm sure I don't have to expand on what bothers me about the England team. After all, a minimum of five or six blacks on the field at any one time is enough to extinguish the ardour of even the most dedicated "racially aware" fan. Looking at the England youth setups, things shall only get worse, which sinks one's spirits even further into the mire of melancholy...
Let's turn our attention to Poland. For me, this tournament should have provided more than enough excitement given that Poland is co-hosting the event: swarms of fans, festival atmosphere, home ground advantage, et cetera. Under normal circumstances, I'd be revved up beyond reason, literally bursting with enthusiasm - but, of course, these days circumstances are never bloody well "normal", are they?
I won't provide You with a dissertation about the shameless corruption and eye-popping incompetence of the PZPN (Polish FA) or the sand-pit dilettantism of coach Franciszek Smuda, which would have been apparent to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of football tactics who watched a match involving Poland.
Even shovelling all of that steaming **** aside, the thing which pissed me off most was the sight of the following four players in Polish shirts: Damien Perquis, Ludovic Obraniak, Sebastian Boenisch, and Eugen Polanski.
Perquis and Obraniak are Frenchmen who just happen to have Polish grandmothers and cannot string together a sentence in Polish between them. This, of course, is hardly surprising, given that they are Frenchmen. After all, there's nothing better than "international" football, is there?
Then there's Sebastian Boenisch and Eugen Polanski, who patriotically decided to "opt" for Poland at the respective ages of 23 and 25 when it became clear that they had no chance of playing for Germany at senior level. I'd whistle these pricks at their every touch, yet the dopey fans accept such "committed" fellows playing for their national team. Little wonder that I cannot stomach this "sport" anymore...
I'd like to say a couple of things on the subject of Cristiano Ronaldo, who is easily the most vilified player since David Beckham. Like Beckham. Ronaldo has no shortage of haters who delight in criticising just about everything he does, ranging from each touch he takes on the field, to his haircuts, to his facial expressions, to the cars he drives.
Ronaldo didn't perform well in the first two games, but the ridiculous near-constant "negative" comparisons with Lionel Messi which he always has to put up with are, in my opinion, a joke. People despise Ronaldo's image and this influences their assessment of his abilities, with the word "overrated" popping up twice in every sentence, just like it did with Beckham.
Ronaldo's detractors love to point out that his successes can be attributed to playing for huge, wealthy, star-studded clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid and that he is a dismal failure on the inetrnational stage.
But what about Messi? The same people who lambast Ronaldo and deify Messi generally omit to mention that the Argentine has played his entire career with Barcelona, in an era in which the Catalans possess one of the finest sides in history. If Ronaldo would be "****" playing for, let's say, West Bromwich Albion, would Messi be any less "****"? At least Ronaldo has proven himself in both Spain and England, where the game is far more physical.
Messi hasn't exactly delivered the goods in international football either and he is playing in Argentine sides which are stronger than Portugal. As Ronaldo himself pointed out in a frustrated response to fans chanting "Messi" whenever the Portuguese player touched the ball earlier in the tournament, the Argentine achieved bugger all at last year's Copa America...
Much is made of Ronaldo's lack of goals at the World Cup. Despite his prodigious hauls at club level, he has only scored two goals in two World Cup finals tournaments - and they were against Iran and North Korea. But, yet again, the people who compare Ronaldo unfavourably with Messi won't draw attention to the fact that the Argentine has only scored once in a World Cup. In fact, 16 of Messi's 26 international goals have come in friendly matches. In contrast, only 5 of Ronaldo's 35 international strikes have fallen in friendlies.
If Ronaldo was black, the media would probably be using the points I have outlined above in an attempt to "prove" that he is superior to Messi and most of the White fans who heckle him would automatically concur.
For all that it matters in my opinion Diego Maradona (mestizo background and all) was a superior player to both Ronaldo and Messi. Maradona in his mid-twenties would have been able to lift both the Argentina and Portugal sides of today to much greater heights - and that's guaranteed...
By the way, for some reason people seem to be labouring beneath the misapprehension that Germany has somehow fielded all-White sides up until the last couple of years when the facts clearly indicate otherwise. The 2002 World Cup squad contained one black (Gerald Asamoah), the 2006 World Cup squad contained two blacks (Asamoah and David Odonkor), while the 2010 World Cup squad was filled with non-Whites (Mesut Ozil, Sami Khedira, Jerome Boateng, Dennis Aogo, Cacau, and Serdar Tasci).
Most importantly, everyone also seems to forget about the half-Turkish Mehmet Scholl (despite Scholl's surname, his father is Turkish), who played in Euro 1996 and Euro 2000. Scholl would have won a lot more caps and played at a couple of World Cups in not for his frequent injuries. The days of Germany starting eleven Whites are long gone...
). Surely Joachim Loew will now have sufficient reason, and cover, to be able to bench Boateng in the semi final.
